Christmas isn't over yet

I hope hope you all had a great Christmas!
I had! And I was very surprised after my fiancé took the Friday's mail inside.

I got Christmas cards, letters and a package!

At first the cards:

The first one on the top is from Lena (USA), the second is from Melanie (Germany), third one is from Jaana (UK) and the fourth is from Edyta (Poland).

And here are all of the Christmas cards this year:

Next the letter:

It's from Edyta (like the fourth card below). Letter, cute paper sheets and a tea bag in a beautiful envelope! I think this is one of the cutest envies I've ever seen! <3 I can't wait to try the tea! Edyta sent me already one letter which got lost. I can't believe how many letters just disappear somewhere! I know that Catrin's letter to USA never arrived either...
I'm going to write another one as soon as possible to her!

Here you can see a bit closer picture of the envelope.

And the stamp in Edyta's letter.

And then the package:

I got Japanese sushi book, some bags of green tea and a letter! I love the book! It has got beautiful pictures! And the stamps...

I can't believe how cute stamps there are in Japan! I actually saw once Japanese Hello Kitty stamp in a flea market but for some reason I left it there... Maybe I should go back to see if it's still there!

After I got the sushi book from Kyoko I had to buy a Manga cook book (in Finnish) too! And now I'm fallen in love with bentos!

I've got some letters to write today but probably I don't have time to post the pictures today.
Next time I can post something here is in Wednesday so I want to thank all of you who have visited here in my blog this year
and I want to wish a

Happy New Year 2013!

-Satu

Merry Christmas!

Still Christmas mail

Today's and yesterday's Christmas cards:

Yesterday: The one with the gnomes and the other with the puppy came from my aunts and the one in the bottom came from my father.

Today: The one on the top (with kittens and a dog) is sent by my friend and the one in the bottom (with a dog too) is from my aunt. In the picture is my cousin's dog.

An outgoing letter to Ria with Christmas fairies:

And some shoppings:

Letters in a bottles. I like to send these to my friends but I'm not sure if they're selling these in the post office anymore. I saw these two and I had to buy them!

This is my favourite stamp sheet at the moment!

And an Enchanted Christmas rubber stamps from Papermania. These I found from a local bookstore on Tuesday (and these are the ones which I used in Ria's letter).

Package from Korea

As I already told I got a surprise package from my friend Jennifer who lives in Korea.

This is what the package looked like :)

And these are the things that were inside! <3

2 Korean mask- keyrings

a magnet

a fan in a pretty green package

postcards with beautiful pictures from Korea

a Christmas card and a letter.

This was a lovely surprise! It really made me happy that there are so thoughtful people out there! <3

I'm interested in knowing what kind of things do you like to get from your penpals?
For example I got really happy when I got 2 letters from Russia (Ksenia and Anja). Anja sent me a postcard and a paper sheet where her friends from their postcrossing meeting wrote their names. And Ksenia sent me 2 Russian bus tickets. I love for example things like those. Tiny things which you usually don't get a chance to hold in your hands.


I hope you leave a comment and tell what kinds of things do you like?

Tomorrow more Christmas cards and some outgoing mail! :)

More Christmas cards

These cards came on Monday

 

These three are from my aunts. I love the vintage styled card. It's beautiful!

This pretty one is from my lovely sister! I like hand made cards much more than the ones you can buy from the stores. That's why I try to make cards myself every year. If I don't have time for it then I usually don't send any cards.

I also got something else:

A big package with a letter and a Christmas card from my friend Jennifer from Korea! This year Christmas came a week early for me... :D I think that maybe I write a new post about Jennifer's gift.


Then the yesterday's mail:

 Letter and a card from Francesca who lives in Italy. I've been writing letters with Francy about 2 years now.

And a card from my fiancé's parents. They always send cards with dogs to us because we've got 4 terriers. :) None of them look like this though. :D

I've shown you the Christmas stamps from this year but maybe I could post a picture of last year's Christmas stamp too:

This one is pretty and actually a bit funny because this is the year (2011) when I started my knitting studies (I graduated this spring) so I have a house full of yarn balls... :D

The Christmas stamp needed a 5 cent stamp with it.

And I sent some letters to my friends with  this year's stamps. They needed a 20 cent stamp too. That didn't look so nice with the Christmas tree:

I wish they would have had something more winter-like... Instead of it they had spring stamps!

These ones are beautiful! The stamp is made of plastic and you can see through it. It looks pretty on the coloured envelope but all envies I had were white and yellow ones...

Lovely cards

I love all kinds of post cards! I've collected for example view cards, vintage cards, postcards with dogs (when I was a child), recipes (I love baking and cooking) and James Dean (he's been my favourite actor since I saw a rebel without a cause when I was 16).

I also love Christmas cards! And I thought that I post all our received cards here this year!

For so far we have got 2 of them:

First one is from Nienke who with I've been writing letters since summer. :) And Nienke shares my love for baking! :D I think that this Christmas card is so cute! I love the colours! Thank you Nienke for this lovely card! :)

And the other is from my cousin Merja who lives in Turku- a beautiful old (actually the oldest) city in the western coast of Finland.
There are a bobcat and a gnome in a snowy forest in Merja's card. So beautiful and full of warmth!

I think that this gnome isn't one santa's helpers. At the old times we had lots of different kinds of gnomes here in Scandinavia (or people thought so). We had for example gnomes who did live in saunas, mills, kilns, cowsheds, stables, in people's homes or in the woods. People thought that these gnomes will bring good luck to the house. For that reason people wanted to keep the gnomes happy and satisfied and for example left a bit food for them and the last steams in sauna.
And actually there is a gnome living in the castle of Turku too! :D

Christmas cards

Even though I haven't had much time for letter writing and blogging I decided to share some pictures about my Christmas card crafts this year.

A cup of coffee, glitter glue, colourful pens and rubber stamps

Stamped evelope and the card (I love those border punchers)

A bit closer look for the envelope and the card.

The Christmas stamps of the year! I love the shape of the stamp and actually the shape of the whole sheet:

And here are some photos of my cards from last year:

These were very simple but I didn't want to add too much things to the card because of the hand made white paper. I loved the paper and how the stamp looked on it.